In this contemporary Romeo and Juliet story set within India's caste system, private investigator Vish Puri faces his most difficult challenge to date - a high-stakes mystery involving one of India's most controversial commodities: love. When Ram and Tulsi fall in love, the young woman's parents are dead set against the union. She's from a high-caste family, but her boyfriend is an untouchable from the lowest strata of Indian society. Young Tulsi's father locks her up and promises to hunt down and kill the "lover boydog."

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator, Book 3

When the elderly father of a top Pakistani cricketer playing in the multi-million-dollar Indian Premier League dies during a post-match dinner, it’s not a simple case of Delhi Belly. His butter chicken has been poisoned. To solve the case, Puri must penetrate the region’s organized crime, following a trail that leads deep into Pakistan - the country in which many members of the P.I.’s family were massacred during the 1947 partition of India. The last piece of the puzzle, however, turns up closer to home when Puri learns of the one person who can identify the killer. Unfortunately it is the one woman in the world with whom he has sworn never to work: his Mummy-ji.

The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Dr. Suresh Jha, best known for unmasking fraudulent swamis and godmen, dies in a fit of giggles at his morning yoga class when goddess Kali appears from the mist and plunges a sword into his chest. The only one laughing now is the main suspect, a powerful guru named Maharaj Swami, who seems to have done away with his most vocal critic.

The Case of the Missing Servant

In hot and dusty Delhi, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests. But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking pot shots at him and his prize chilli plants?

Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote

Inspector Ghote of the Bombay police has been regulated to antipickpocket patrol, where he promptly gets himself into one of those fearful fixes which are equally the product of his faults and his virtues.

Inspector Ghote Caught in Meshes

An American visitor to India is killed on the road from Bombay to Poona. Called in to investigate the murder, Inspector Ghote soon makes the acquaintance of the victim's brother, Professor Gregory Strongbow. But the professor is both stubborn and evasive, refusing to tell Ghote what he knows about the events leading up to Hector's death. Soon Ghote finds his own life in danger, as he is faced with a conspiracy that reaches to the very highest levels of Indian politics... This is the third book in the hugely popular 'Inspector Ghote' series from H.R.F. Keating.

Enemies at Home: The Flavia Albia Mysteries, Book 2

In ancient Rome, the number of slaves was far greater than that of free citizens. As a result, often the people Romans feared most were the "enemies at home," the slaves under their own roofs. Because of this, Roman law decreed that if the head of a household was murdered at home, and the culprit wasn't quickly discovered, his slaves - all of them, guilty or not - were presumed responsible and were put to death...without exception.

Six and a Half Deadly Sins: Dr. Siri Paiboun, Book 10

Laos, 1979: Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining?

Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

In a small, provincial town in the heart of India, a politician’s wife has done her husband’s career a great service, by dying under suspicious circumstances. That the corpse and the trail have been cold for fifteen years hasn’t saved Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID from being sent to investigate. But what chance does he have when his chief suspect is so powerful, when the whole district is against him, and when a holy man is fasting to the death to protest his prying?

The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café

In this delightful 15th installment, Mma Ramotswe has her hands full both at home and in the office. To add to her current challenges, her devoted partner, Grace Makutsi, has decided to branch out on her own and open The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe. But even “Miss 97 Per Cent” can't quite meet all the demands of running a business - not to mention those that a lightning strike makes on her building.

Precious Ramotswe has taken on two puzzling cases. First, she is approached by the lawyer Mma Sheba, who is the executor of a deceased farmer’s estate. Mma Sheba has a feeling that the young man who has stepped forward may be falsely impersonating the farmer’s nephew in order to claim his inheritance. Mma Ramotswe agrees to visit the farm and find out what she can about the self-professed nephew. Then the proprietor of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon comes to Mma Ramotswe for advice.

The Perfect Murder

It is Inspector Ghote's bad luck to be landed with the case of the perfect murder at the start of his career with the Bombay Police, for in this most baffling of crimes there is the cunning and important tycoon Lala Varde to contend with. And as if this were not enough, he finds himself having to investigate the mysterious theft of one rupee from the desk of yet another Very Important Person, the Minister of Police Affairs and the Arts.

A Man of Some Repute: A Very English Mystery, Book 1

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past. Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.

Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock

Inspector Ghote comes to London. The Indian police inspector is to attend an international conference on drug smuggling, and in cold, drizzling London he is faced with his first case outside India - and it's a very odd case.

Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade

This was no ordinary murder, for the victim was Frank Masters, millionaire and philanthropist. The case was bound to attract much public attention. But Inspector Ghote finds that his demands for evidence are met with nothing but lies and evasions.

Falling in Love

Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice, the first novel in her beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced listeners to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy's finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli - then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor. Years after Brunetti cleared her name, Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca.

Dreaming Spies

For years now, readers of the Russell Memoirs have wondered about the tantalizing mentions of Japan. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes had spent three weeks there, between India (The Game) and San Francisco (Locked Rooms). The time has finally come, to tell that story. It is 1925, and Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive home to find... a stone. A stone with a name, which they last saw in the Tokyo garden of the future emperor of Japan.

The Axe Factor: Jimm Juree, Book 3

Since Jimm Juree moved, under duress, with her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she has missed her career as a journalist. In Chiang Mai, she was covering substantial stories and major crimes. But here in Maprao, Jimm has to scrape assignments from the local online journal, the Chumphon Gazette. This time they are sending her out to interview a local farang (European) writer, Conrad Coralbank, who writes award-winning crime novels.

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: Flavia de Luce, Book 7

Flavia de Luce - "part Harriet the Spy, part Violet Baudelaire from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (The New York Times Book Review) - takes her remarkable sleuthing prowess to the unexpectedly unsavory world of Canadian boarding schools in the captivating new mystery from New York Times best-selling author Alan Bradley.

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel, Book 6

On a spring morning in 1951, 11-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train’s arrival in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test.

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die: The Dr. Siri Investigations, Book 9

In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. But now she's clairvoyant and can speak to the dead. That's why the long-dead brother of a Lao general has enlisted her to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years.

The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

Hardly a day goes by when nine-year-old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions to walking trees to winged beasts in the woods to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village.

Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart: Inspector Ghote, Book 8

Some crooks have tried to snatch the plump son of a business tycoon, and have accidentally made off with his playmate instead. But they're not changing their plan: a payment is to be delivered to them or a small corpse is to be delivered to Inspector Ghote. But what kind of ransom can a mere tailor's boy demand? And, as something more unpleasant than just a ransom note arrives from the kidnappers, are the police helping to keep the boy in one piece?

Emma: A Modern Retelling

Emma Woodhouse's widowed father is an anxious man, obsessed with nutrition and the latest vitamins. He lives the life of a country gentleman in contemporary England, protectively raising his young daughters, Isabella and Emma. While Isabella grows into a young woman, marries a society photographer for Vogue at the age of 19, and gets down to the business of reproducing herself, Emma pursues a degree in interior design at university in Bath and then returns to set up shop in her home village.

Publisher's Summary

In this contemporary Romeo and Juliet story set within India's caste system, private investigator Vish Puri faces his most difficult challenge to date - a high-stakes mystery involving one of India's most controversial commodities: love.

When Ram and Tulsi fall in love, the young woman's parents are dead set against the union. She's from a high-caste family, but her boyfriend is an untouchable from the lowest strata of Indian society. Young Tulsi's father locks her up and promises to hunt down and kill the "lover boydog." Fortunately, India's Love Commandos, a real-life group of volunteers dedicated to helping mixed-caste couples, come to the rescue. They successfully free Tulsi, but Ram has gone missing.

The task of finding him falls to India's "most private investigator." Unfortunately, Vish Puri is not having a good month. He's already failed to recover the millions stolen from the First National Bank of Punjab; his wallet has been stolen; and worst of all, his arch rival, investigator Hari Kumar, is also trying to locate Ram. To solve the case and reunite the star-crossed lovers, Puri and his team of misfit assistants must infiltrate Ram's village and navigate the caste politics shaped by millennia-old prejudices.

Critics hailed the The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken, the last installment in the Vish Puri Mysteries, as Tarquin Hall's best yet, saying that each audiobook is "more complicated and dangerous than the one before." (HuffingtonPost). Now, with The Case of the Love Commandos, Hall keeps raising the stakes, delivering more twists, turns, and surprises than ever before.

This is another very entertaining gem in the Vish Puri detective series. Besides the well thought out and well-paced mystery plot (actually, plots), the book features detailed and lively descriptions of everyday life in modern India—the food, the traffic jams, the religious practices, as well as insights into social customs and family life. As in the previous Vish Puri stories, there are particular social issues about India that are featured in this story. In this case the social themes are the changing views in India toward arranged marriages and toward the social caste system. These themes are woven naturally into the broader tale and treated at times with humor as well as from their serious side.

A word about the narrator, Sam Dastor. In my opinion the narration of this story makes it twice as enjoyable as a mere visual read would be. The narrator captures Indian accents and speaking mannerisms in a way that makes the story and characters come fully alive. I highly recommend this book on its merits alone. I doubly recommend it with Sam Dastor as the narrator.

Well, the publisher's summary points out that each of the Vish Puri novels has become more complicated and dangerous. Yes, I agree--but what it has accomplished with that end in sight, it has done by sacrificing the rather delightful combination of quirky characters that amused as much as impressed--in the service of trying to make a more serious mystery I suppose.

I am saddened that Mr. Hall has chosen to depart (to some degree) from what was originally a charming set of stories that, read by Sam Dastor, were among my all-time favorites from Audible. I have no idea why Mr. Hall decided to move from the earlier, more amusing, stories. Others may feel this was a natural progression, a good conclusion to the series, but I regret that he didn't just keep with the approach that was so much fun to read.

This is good--if you enjoy mysteries, you will enjoy it. But I really missed something of the delight that went with the first of the books. Recommend, but with that caveat.

If you could sum up The Case of the Love Commandos in three words, what would they be?

Too many storylines

Would you recommend The Case of the Love Commandos to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes. I love the private detective and his different situations he gets into.

Which scene was your favorite?

When the plot was resolved.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Laugh out loud in places.

Any additional comments?

This story had too many story lines to follow. I like it for its simplicity and this particular story was very complicated. Lots of different things happening in different places.

I would love for the author to simplify and give us more about Vish in his own life; the chilis, his mother (but don't switch between feeble and strong old lady), his staff and their interactions, etc. I want to know more about him!

I love how this author!!! I can't wait to hear more cases (stories) from India's #1 Detective. Tarquin Hall's vivid descriptions of the many characters makes me laugh and at times shake my head. Throughly Entertaining!!

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